(Newser)
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Egypt's top appeals court issued a final ruling Thursday that effectively acquits former President Hosni Mubarak on charges of killing protesters during the 2011 uprising that ended his nearly three-decade reign, the AP reports. The Court of Cassation rejected an appeal by prosecutors, allowing an acquittal verdict from 2014 to stand. The judge also rejected a civil petition for compensation from families of some of the hundreds of protesters killed during the 18-day Arab Spring uprising. Mubarak and his interior minister, Habib al-Adly, were convicted and sentenced to life in prison in 2012 on charges of failing to protect the lives of demonstrators, but another court threw out the verdict two years later, citing technical flaws in the prosecution. The ailing 88-year-old Mubarak was flown by helicopter to the courtroom from the Cairo military hospital where he has resided for most of the last six years, and where he served a three-year sentence for corruption charges in a separate case. He sat in a wheelchair in the defendant's cage during the hearing.

When the charges against him were read out, he responded: "It did not happen." Later he exchanged smiles and winks with a dozen or so supporters in the courtroom, including his two sons. Mubarak does not face any other charges and is technically free to go, but it was unclear whether he would leave the hospital, where he has been under informal house arrest in recent years. Mubarak and figures from his government were widely vilified in the months after the uprising, but many have gradually returned to public life since 2013, when the military overthrew his freely elected successor, the Islamist Mohammed Morsi, after a divisive year in power. International and local rights groups say the freedoms won in the 2011 uprising have been lost since then, and that the security services today under President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who as military chief led Morsi's overthrow, are even more brutal and repressive than under Mubarak.

"freely elected successor, the Islamist Mohammed Morsi" You mean a President who was marching full speed ahead in turning Egypt into a fundamentalist state similar to Saudi and Iran....yea I'm freaking glad the military came back in and threw him out.

Eastwind 7

Mar 3, 2017 8:47 AM CST

How many autocratic but stable leaders have been overthrown, only to be replaced by tyrants who were far worse? And, how many of those stable leaders, many of them long-time U.S. allies, have suddenly found themselves orphaned by the United States, in the name of "freedom?" In Egypt's case, the Arab Spring did not usher in freedom, but an Islamic caliphate, a religious dictatorship. I hope Mubarak will be allowed to live out his days in peace.

Jerman

Mar 3, 2017 7:32 AM CST

Freedoms lost from the Spring uprising? Egypt was being turned into an Islamic State under Morsi, far worse for the most populous Arab state than a dictatorship, as we now know.